Abstract: This paper discusses far-reaching work-related changes that have taken place globally over the past few decades and explains how these changes have influenced the world of the work and workers. It highlights the situation of people living in developing countries in particular, including how (career) counseling theory and intervention are still predominantly characterized by a predominantly “positivist” (quantitative, ‘test-and-tell’) approach. This approach is largely based on Western principles that do not cater adequately for the unique needs and nature of the various other cultures. Narrative, storied or qualitative (or integrated, qualitative+quantitative) approaches and interventions that aim to promote narrative identity, narratability, autobiographicity, and a narrative identity (advocated by e.g. Hartung, McAdams and Savickas) that “integrates the reconstructed past, experienced present, and imagined future” are often still regarded as the classic homely bird born in a barnyard (Hans Anderson’s ‘Ugly Duckling) in (career counselling) and are rarely applied. While novel, ‘change’ counselling approaches (life design counseling for career construction in particular) have to a large extent been accepted and followed in North America and Western Europe, they are to a large extent unknown elsewhere in the world.

A counselling for change model for developing country contexts that offers hope is proposed. I then discuss the theoretical and conceptual framework for life design counseling and its potential for promoting ‘change counselling’, advancing career adaptability and resilience, employability, and accessing sustainable, decent work. I discuss two research projects (work-in-progress) and examine how career choice making, career adaptability, (career) resilience, and a sense of self-improvement and (narrative) identity (formation) can be promoted and used to help people become employable and gain access to decent work. The paper concludes that exhibiting ‘change’ orientation, innovativeness and the ability to generate ideas continually, reinvent “outdated” ideas, and deal with “stuckness” represent the Beautiful Swan that can help people overcome obstacles in their career-lives. Ultimately, this approach advances Goal 8 of the UN Agenda, namely “Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.”

Workshop: “Getting published in high impact scholarly journals: Why and how?”

Abstract:Aim of the workshop: The aim of this workshop is to assist participants on their exciting journey towards get published in high impact scholarly journals. Participants attending this workshop should ask themselves why they wish to publish (e.g. recognition, pushing the boundaries of knowledge, testing the water or challenging certain conventions). They will be guided briefly through the steps in preparing manuscripts for submission, including the basic steps in writing scholarly articles, establishing a group of critical readers, testing drafts in other forums (for example, conferences and seminars), submitting manuscripts to language editors, studying and adhering to journals’ author guidelines, contacting the editor, and responding to reviewer feedback.

Expected outcomes: By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to

clarify their own reasons for engaging in academic writing and publication,

recognise and resolve issues that influence their scholarly writing negatively,

advance their article writing skills,

grasp the ethics in article writing,

understand how to deal with feedback (and why manuscripts get rejected), and

publish at least one article in a high impact journal within 12 months of the workshop.

The presenter will address some common queries, mistakes and anxieties that plague authors (early career professionals in particular), and provide a forum for participants to seek advice, either in general terms, or on their specific works and intended publications. It is envisaged that this will be an interactive process filled with hands-on writing experiences and lively discussion of the challenges in scholarly writing.

Bio: Prof. Kobus Maree (DEd (Career Counselling); PhD (Learning Facilitation in Mathematics); DPhil (Psychology)) is a full Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Pretoria. His main research interests are career construction (counselling), life design (counselling), emotional-social intelligence and social responsibility, and learning facilitation in mathematics. He links research results to appropriate career choices and to life designing.

Past editor of the South African Journal of Psychology, managing editor of Gifted Education International, regional editor for Southern Africa: Early Child Development and Care, and a member of several national and international bodies, including the Society for Vocational Psychology (SVP) (USA), the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) (USA), the Psychology Association of South Africa (SA), and the Association of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). In 2009, he was awarded the Stals Prize of the South African Academy of Science and Arts for exceptional research and contributions to Psychology. In June 2014, he was awarded the Stals prize for exceptional research and contributions to Education, and he received the Psychological Society of South Africa’s (PsySSA) Award for Excellence in Science during the 20th South African Psychology Congress in September 2014. Prof. Maree was awarded Honorary Membership of the Golden Key International Honour Society for exceptional academic achievements, leadership skills and community involvement in October 2014. He was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal for Teaching and Learning from the University of Pretoria in 2010 and has been nominated successfully as an Exceptional Academic Achiever on four consecutive occasions (2003-2016). He has a B1 rating from the National Research Foundation (the highest rating in the history of the faculty).

Prof. Maree has authored or co­authored 100+ peer­reviewed articles and 55 books/ book chapters on career counselling, research and related topics since 2009. In the same period, he supervised 30 doctoral theses and Master’s dissertations and read keynote papers at 20+ international and at 20+ national conferences (e.g. Australia, Croatia, Egypt, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Mauritius, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, and the USA; e.g. one of the State-of-the-Science speakers (Division 16: Counselling Psychology) at the International Congress of Applied Psychology, the flagship event on the international psychology calendar, held in Paris in July, 2014. Topic: Connecting life-themes to construct self-portraits. He has also presented numerous invited workshops at conferences across the world on a) integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches in career counselling, and b) the art and science of writing scholarly articles. Over the past seven years, he has spent a lot of time abroad. For instance, he accepted invitations to spend time as a visiting professor at various universities where he presented workshops on e.g. contemporary developments in career counselling, article writing, and research methodology. Prof. Maree was awarded a fellowship of the IAAP at the ICAP Conference in Paris in July, 2014.

Bio: Prof. Dr. Emine Didem Evci Kiraz was graduated from Medical Faculty of Ege University, 1989. She completed her M.Sc. on Public Health, Health Science Institute of Gazi University, 1997 and Ph.D. on Public Health, Health Science Institute of Hacettepe University, 2003. Between 1990-2004, she has worked in the Ministry of Health following levels:

Prof.Dr.Evci Kiraz, in 2004, passed to academic life and now, she is Prof.Dr. in Department of Public Health, Medical Faculty of Adnan Menderes University. In addition that, she was appointed as founding Dean of Faculty of Nursing, on 3 Agust 2016. She has established three Training and Research Center in the University: Urban Health; Roma People; Innovation.

Prof.Dr.Evci Kiraz has published several scientific publications. Her main area is environmental health. She has brought new concept in Turkish scientific area, Urban Health, as part of WHO Healthy Cities Project. She is member of Advisory Board of Turkish Healthy Cities Association. She is also interested in tourism and health, health impact assessment, elderly health, health promotion, social determinants of health, risk assessment.

Abstract: This topic provides new information about big data in the context of health informatics and psycho-informatics. Key characteristics of big data in health informatics and psycho-informatics are related with structured and unstructured genomics, psychometrics, metabolomics, clinical diagnosis and physiological personal data. Big data analytics will have prestigious effects on disease management in public health and preventive medicine on personalized treatment. This study focusses on new and forthcoming trends on big data in health and psychology.

Online and ubiquitous computation devices such as smart phones, tablets, wearable devices record every step of the users. Big data analytics presents an opportunity to monitor and analyzing not only the vital signs of human but also the behavior of the users in ubiquitous environment.

Technology and mobile devices cause the new generation to constantly collect information and engage in messaging. This situation can lead to the emergence of both health-related health problems and the persistence of these problems. One of the most important technology-focused health problems is technology and internet addiction. Technology and Internet addictiveness can be treated by psychologists and psychiatrists by using new psycho-informatics methods and technologies. By this viewpoint, psychology and psychiatry researchers have an interest to use modern data analytics methods to cure or provide some help to the Z generation of youngsters.

From this point of view, we have shared in this study the applications of big medical data, especially health, psychology and medicine, which will provide great advantages in the digital medicine revolution. Examples of some important health data analysis studies we can share include A) Processing of gene expression data by biostatistics methods, b) Examination of electronic patient records and laboratory results by machine training methods, c) Machine learning methods and risk analysis before surgery operations, d) Analysis of PET scans and patient records by machine learning methods, e) Processing of air quality data collected by social networks with machine learning methods, f) Analysis of users’ feelings in news tweets by machine learning methods .

Biography: He is a software engineer and holds a PhD degree in Software Engineering. He is giving lectures in management of information systems, IT management services, data mining and software engineering. He has interested in human computer interaction, web based education systems, data mining, business intelligence, big data, big data in bioinformatics and management information systems. He has published articles, books and book chapters at the prestigious journals about use and data mining applications of business information systems in health, tourism, and education. He has edited and coedited books in data mining, mobile computing, data mining applications in engineering and medicine. He is coordinator in medical informatics in BAU Health and Sciences Institute. He is an academic member at the Academic World Education and Research Center. He is the founder rector of Bahçeşehir Cypurs University in Lefkoşa at Cyprus.

Abstract: Pursuant to the literature review, the studies in the environmental education domain are limited with presenting the existing attitudes and behaviours. In consideration with the current situation in the world, the studies on the applicable attitudes and behaviours are only limited with the situation assessment and do not put any significant contributions on the solution of environmental problems. One of the most effective ways to provide positive attitude and behaviours to the teachers is put them to an effective, scientific program. The environmental education courses included in the curriculum of education faculties in the recent years aim to positively change the environmental attitudes and behaviours of teacher candidates. Considering that the teachers graduated in previous terms did not get any environmental courses accordingly and the environment in the North Cyprus has been increasily deteriorated, there is no need to make any needs analysis since the need for an environmental education program stands out. A teacher, who wants the students to be sensitive to the environment, should also be sensitive to the environment. It is only a dream to think that the students of a teacher without any care towards the environment would be sensitive to the environment. The recent studies conducted in our country on the environmental education do not include any curriculum improvement activity. Thus, this study becomes very significant from the literature aspect. From this framework, the aim of this study is to enhance the sensitivenesss among the teachers, who raise the students and are role models, towards the environment and raise students, who care about the environment.

In this study, the embedded mixed design is used as a method and the Social Problems and Re-Constructionism Design of Problem-Based Design. Correspondingly, the aim is to contribute on the solution of environmental problems as a social problem. The curriculum development model of TabaTyler was used and a draft curriculum was prepared by performing separate actions for each step recommended in the model. The quasi-experimental model was used during the efficacy evaluation of curriculum. 40 teachers, who voluntarily attended to the experimental activity, were provided with teaching. During the evaluation of program, “environmental lesson achievement test” and “teachers oriented environmental attitude scale” developed by the researcher were used as quantitative measurement tool. In order to support the qualitative data within the framework of research design, the interviews were conducted with 15 people chosen among the experiment group in accordance with the purposeful sampling through using the interview form developed by the researcher. T-test was used for the analysis of qualitative data by taking the hypothesis into consideration and whether there is any significant statistical variance of empiric activity. Upon the review of findings generated by the analysis, the scores of experiment group for the pre-test and final test achievement, and environmental attitude scores show a significant variance in favor of final test. As a result of data analysis from the qualitative interviews, all teacher expressed their opinions as the program is effective. The Sustainable Environmental Education Program developed in accordance with the generated data can be considered as effective and beneficial. It is recommended that the draft curriculum developed in accordance with the outcomes should be elaborated in details as the next step and used as a inservice training program in the education faculties and Education Common Services Department, TRNC Ministry of National Education and Culture.

Bio: Nazım Kaşot studied biology at the Ege University between the years 2003 and 2007. His graduation project was about the biology of stripe necked terrapin (Mauremys rivulata). He was ranked third in the class and the fourth of section Nazım Kaşot, Kıbrıs Adası’nda Dağılış Gösteren Çizgili Kaplumbağa’nın (Mauremys rivulata) Ekolojisi ve Biyolojisi Hakkında Bir Ön Çalışma with 85/100 points. He has the master degree on Secondary Education Field Teaching at Atatürk Teacher Training Academy between the years 2010 and 2011 and then worked as a biology and science teacher at the Bekirpaşa High School, Mehmetçik Secondary School, Mağusa Vocational High School, Haspolat Vocational High School and Gazi Mağusa Türk Maarif College. He was graduated from the Master of Science program on environmental education at the Near East University in 2012. Currently, he was graduated form his PhD study in the same program. He is studying for Near East University Atatürk Faculty of Education as an assisstant professor in the field of environmental education and management deparment.